


Submission

by admiralty



Series: Culmination [5]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Canon Compliant, Episode: s04e13 Never Again, F/M, Sex, Sexual Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:59:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18058196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/admiralty/pseuds/admiralty
Summary: Scully's (yes, sexual) encounter with Ed Jerse takes an unexpected turn. Believe it or not, this story supports the MSR. Takes place during the events of "Never Again." Part of Culmination (Extras)Chapter Two: Mulder and Scully reflect on the Jerse incident twenty years later.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is based off the section of Glen Morgan & James Wong's script that described the beginning of a clearly sexual encounter that was later deleted from the episode. Whatever you think personally about whether or not Scully had sex with Ed, I think it's heavily implied she did. I believe a sexually liberated Scully is a wonderful thing and we were cheated out of seeing it or truly even verifying it. 
> 
> I love the idea that Scully got some, but MSR always reigns supreme and was certainly very much a part of her motivations. This is how, if they did sleep together, I imagine it to have gone down.
> 
> Thanks to OnlyTheInevitable and AweburnPhoenix for your beta work and support, love you ladies!
> 
> If you want to see the script page go [here.](https://twitter.com/xfilesdiaries/status/1104239282422599681)

 

**_SUBMISSION_ **

 

**SCULLY**

**(Never Again)**

 

 

 

His eyes lock onto hers and her pulse races madly. There’s a pounding between her ears and deep down between her thighs. She wants this. She wants it badly.

His hand is gripping her wrist firmly and she likes it. _God, she likes it._ Does he even know how much? Maybe he noticed before, at the bar. It was difficult to hide in the moment. His attention to her desires only adds to her arousal.

The inevitable feeling that’s been building up inside her all evening has reached a breaking point. She has a choice to make and she needs to make it before she loses all control.

 _It’s good to lose control every once in a while,_ Ed told her at the Hard Eight. She knows he’s right. Her time has come around yet again.

She’s so tired of waiting around for something like this to happen to her, for someone to want her like this. She only wants to be wanted. And from the way his eyes are drifting over her lips as he licks his own he clearly wants her. Does she want him, too?

Every fiber of her being is telling her _yes. Want this. It’s okay to want this, Dana._

Ed moves into her and before she knows what is happening she’s pinned against the wall of his barren apartment, the light from a single lamp on the desk peering at them from across the room like a lone voyeur, watching, wondering. He lifts her arms up beside her head and holds them against the wall.

She could stop this. She has little reason to believe Ed wouldn’t accept the rejection graciously, shake her hand, and send her off uncomfortably into the stormy Philadelphia night. She could let her brain make the smart decision, win the battle against enjoying this new sensation of being dominated this way.

But instead her body does something it’s never had the opportunity to do before: it reacts.

Her breath quickens, her chest heaving, as his eyes bore into hers, and she cannot stop the wetness building between her thighs. She’s somewhat embarrassed in the moment how much this is turning her on, how much _he_ turns her on.

Then he’s kissing her, passionately, and his lips part to hers and she’s inside him, her tongue claiming occupancy. He tastes like dirty martinis and cigarette smoke. It’s fucking heaven, and maybe not exactly what she pictures when she fantasizes at home but still… heaven to be kissing someone, anyone. When was the last time she kissed a man? Ethan, maybe? God, has it been that long? What the fuck has she been doing all this time?

 _Mulder._ She instinctively pulls back, and for the first time in a good hour her thoughts invariably turn to the one man who’s consumed her entire world. The man who, through no real fault of his own, is still somewhat responsible for the mind numbing stasis her life sits in. _Why did she pull away? Why does thinking of Mulder make her want to change her mind about this?_

 _Fuck_. Even in another fucking state he still has this much control over her. In this moment she feels rage within her; actual, palpable anger directed at her partner.

_It’s good to lose control every once in a while._

Her momentary hesitancy has fortunately gone unnoticed by Ed, and he interprets her pulling away as permission to move downward along her neck, kissing, sucking. He’s ravenous, creating suction noises that echo throughout the empty apartment, a crash of wrathful thunder outside, his building hunger for her evident against her leg.

He desires her, and he’s showing her how much he desires her. It feels so good to be wanted. _So good…_

For a moment she worries she’s using him. Is that all this is? Some kind of sexual bandaid to cover up how lonely she is, how devalued she feels right now? But maybe none of that matters, because he clearly wants this too. He lets go of her wrists and untucks her shirt gently, moving his kisses to her stomach.

Her eyes close in ecstasy, caught off guard by his tenderness. But she does not want gentle, not tonight. Of their own volition, her hands move to his back and squeeze, hard, digging and scratching as if verifying his physical existence, an actual male body so close to hers. He’s real, she’s real, this is real.

She feels a dull ache on her own lower back: the ouroboros… raw, as raw as her emotions. She makes a choice. Gripping his shoulders, she pulls him back up to a standing position. She leaps up into him, wedged between his body and the wall, her legs wrapping around him much like the snake he watched her get tattooed onto her body. A permanent reminder of… something. She isn’t sure of what.

Her nails scratch his back again, hard, and she remembers how she felt as the needle buzzed and stung; how he looked into her eyes as it happened and how much she enjoyed the pain.

It was all foreplay, she now realizes. Everything about this night has led to this moment, right now, the moment she loses control and lets someone in. She doesn’t even care that she probably won’t see him again.

He presses her against the wall and is kissing her again, and the tattoo hurts in this position but she doesn’t mind; the pain is exquisite. He holds her up for a minute, kissing as she pulls his hair, but then slides down, dropping to his knees, the weight becoming a bit much. Her legs are still wrapped around his waist and she moves to straddle him, sitting on his thighs, facing him, looking into his eyes once again. He tears her jacket off her body and she removes her shirt with one quick motion.

This is going to be fast. And she is as ready as she will ever be.

He looks at her, sitting on his lap in her bra, and for a moment he seems to stop, as if battling with himself. She wonders why she hadn’t noticed any hesitation on his part before and it makes her even more confident about her decision.

He kisses her again, though, with even more intensity. It’s as if he’s reacting to something within, as if something is spurring him on. She hopes it’s just her.

She shimmies out of her pants as he shifts his body backwards. “Wait… do you have… protection?” she asks.

“Oh. Yeah, of course,” he says. He pulls his own pants off, then searches in the pocket for his wallet, pulling out a single condom. She smirks a bit at his preparedness and he shrugs. “You never know.”

“Never say never,” she responds. Her outward smile is at war with the relief she feels inside that he had one on his person; if he’d had to get up to find it, she might have lost her nerve.

She crawls up on top of him, straddling his thighs. He lays down completely and his hands move to her hips, and for a moment she just revels in the feeling of this, of a man beneath her, his desire for her achingly evident. She thinks of the silent battle between her head and her heart that wages constantly, preventing her from going after what she wants, all the time. She’s never been so close before and she wants this.

She pulls his underwear down, and then her own, and sits on him again. It’s dark in the room and for some reason she doesn’t want to look down, she doesn’t want to see him. She just wants to feel him.

_It’s good to lose control every once in a while._

He unwraps the condom and she rolls it down, not having done this in years but remembering anyway. Like riding a bike. Then her eyes lock with his in the dim lamplight and she lifts herself up, ready.

As she sinks down onto him, though, something unexpected happens. His unfamiliar hands move to the small of her back, softly ghosting over her tattoo, and suddenly what she feels instead is a familiar hand, a different hand, one that belongs there. A hand that moves to that spot so often it’s built a home there.

And then, even more unexpectedly, she’s looking down into familiar eyes now. She no longer sees Ed Jerse.

She sees Mulder.

Ed’s hands move down to her backside and he rocks against her, his passion building, and she gyrates her hips against him, the friction so good, so needed, but combined with thoughts of Mulder it feels wrong and inappropriate. Embarrassing.

What would he think if he knew this was happening? How would he react? As soon as these thoughts enter her mind she pushes them away. He may have control over everything else but not this, not now. She _wants_ to do this, she wants to be thinking of him.

She leans down and tastes Ed's lips again, the alcohol and bar flavor evolving in her imagination into what must be something different, maybe sunflower salt, a hint of coffee and desperation. Obsession. What must that taste like? Why can’t she ever seem to find out?

His hands leave her lower back and journey upwards, caressing her shoulder blades, and again she pictures the large, callused hands of her friend, her utterly attractive _best_ friend and suddenly what once felt embarrassing is now incredibly liberating.

Ed mumbles “Dana” and it feels good but somehow wrong. A million thoughts of _that’s how sex is supposed to feel_ invade her mind, her upbringing and subsequent rebellion having taught her as much, but this is a different kind of wrong.

“Dana…” he says again, and she recoils. Before she can stop the words from escaping her lips, she says it.

“Call me Scully.”

His eyes open wider, and he doesn’t understand, how could he? But he smiles, wanting to please her, and says it, “Scully…” and her eyes close again.

Her fight with Mulder is now all she can think about, how he’d made her feel cheapened, how belittling his behavior was, and now she was fucking some random guy in a strange apartment with a fresh tattoo on _his_ spot, _Mulder’s spot, a tattoo, for chrissake…_

Has she lost sight of herself, truly? Or is she merely finding herself for the first time?

Despite her wild emotional state, her body reacts quickly and predictably to Ed’s touch, _Mulder’s touch, oh God, stop thinking this way,_ she scolds herself, but doesn't know why. Her confusion is real but so is her arousal, and when the light inevitably flashes behind her eyes as she crests, she falls down on top of him, breathing heavily. He seems to have finished too but she honestly doesn’t care.

She can’t see Ed’s face at all while she basks in her afterglow, and imagines it’s Mulder’s chest she’s pressing her cheek against, that it’s Mulder’s heart pounding beneath her ear, pounding for her. She’s horribly uncomfortable and absolutely content all at the same time.

Now she knows the truth: she wants to be wanted, certainly. But she wants to be wanted by Mulder.

She rolls off Ed, onto her back. Side by side, they lay quietly on the cold floor for a moment, until he starts laughing quietly.

“What is it?” she asks.

“It’s nothing,” he laughs. “Really. Absolutely nothing.” His words are full of meaning but for himself alone, and she’s fine with that. She has plenty of thoughts she’d prefer to keep inside her head as well.

He rolls over and leans in, smiling, and she knows he wants to kiss her. She feels guilty for fantasizing about someone else while this nice guy is seemingly so enamored of her, so she relents, kisses him back.

_Will I ever stop being the one trying to please some man?_

“That was wild,” he says. She cannot disagree. They are quiet, and then he says into the emptiness “You’re so beautiful, do you know that?”

She doesn’t know how to respond, so she doesn’t. The person she wants to think she’s beautiful, to notice her, isn’t here to respond to.

“The storm is still pretty bad, I think you should stay,” he continues.

“...Ed?”

“Uh huh?”

She isn’t sure how to say it, but she has to. “I’m... leaving tomorrow.” She doesn’t do one night stands. She isn’t sure of the protocol. “...You know?”

He exhales deeply. “I know.”

Suddenly she feels a bit awkward, and making him feel bad wasn’t her intention. She hadn’t wanted to lead him on.

“I had a really great time tonight,” she adds. It’s the one hundred percent truth. It feels good to say it.

“Me too. You have no idea, Dana.”

They lay there for another minute on his cold, bare floor. Then he sits up, pulling on his clothing, handing her hers.

“You should still stay,” he says confidently. “I don’t feel right sending you out in this weather. You can take the bed, okay?” She pulls her shirt up to her chest, holding it there. They both seem to understand the intimacy part of this encounter is over.

“No, I’ll sleep on the couch, I don’t want to take your bed.”

“It’s fine,” he says firmly. “I want you to.” He holds out his shirt to her. “Make yourself at home.”

She takes it, and puts it on. His loose-fitting shirt will certainly be more comfortable to sleep in than her own. He smiles and turns, heading to his bathroom.

Her hand moves naturally to the small of her back, to the circled snake now resting on that spot. _Mulder’s spot._ It hadn’t occurred to her what she’d done until it was over. And now here it is, a permanent reminder that in some way, somehow, she will always belong to him and him alone.

What she’d done with Ed has only solidified in her mind that this feeling will not go away.

_Two steps forwards, three steps back._

She doesn’t want to believe everything in her life will always revolve around Mulder, but somehow she knows it’s the truth.

Surrender is her only option.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Tell me why you kept it.”
> 
> It’s been over two decades. He asks out of the blue as they lay entwined together, her naked leg draped across his lap, and his hand creeping across her hip, a fingertip gently tracing the outline of the ouroboros on the small of her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter can be read as a one-off (if Scully/ Jerse is triggering for you), but I urge you to read chapter 1 first.
> 
> Thanks to the divine @OnlyTheInevitable for the beta and being my general sounding board. xo

 

 

 

_**SUBMISSION 2** _

 

**MULDER**

**(2018)**

 

“Tell me why you kept it.”

It’s been over two decades. He asks out of the blue as they lay entwined together, her naked leg draped across his lap, and his hand creeping across her hip, a fingertip gently tracing the outline of the ouroboros on the small of her back.

“Haven’t we gone over this?” she asks with a sigh. 

They have, more than once, always briefly. It’s all so far in the past, beyond the two of them, beyond everything they’ve been through since. It should be so unimportant now. It should be over.

But it isn’t.

Twenty five years of Mulder and Scully, in all of their splendor, in all of their despair, and he’s still finding himself asking her about Ed fucking Jerse.

Or rather, asking her about fucking Ed Jerse.

“Yes. I want to hear it again.” His finger circles the tattoo again and again, the snake eating its tail, forever in motion. Around and around. 

“Why, Mulder? Is this some kind of penance? After all this time?”

He shakes his head because it isn’t. At least, it isn’t for her. But he would never tell her that.

“No, Scully. It’s nothing like that.”

He leans down to kiss her there, at the center of the snake. He’s picturing it now, her wild, reckless night of rebellion. How it should have been him that night, holding her, kissing her. Fucking her.

Cherishing her. 

He has no qualms or hang-ups about her sexual past, especially during a time when he didn’t see her the way she deserved to be seen. He’s not jealous, or angry. Not anymore. They are past that.

He has no right. He knows this. The penance is his alone.

“Tell me.”

“Why I kept it?” His eyes shift to catch hers and she smiles, her Mona Lisa smile. She still has secrets he may never know. He loves her this way, his enigmatic doctor. “I kept it because I like it.”

“That’s all I get?” His tongue darts out to chase the snake, head to tail, around and around. 

“Also because I hear removal really hurts.”

He nips now, hard, at her gluteus medius. She inhales sharply. “And getting it didn’t?” he asks. “Because I hear you like that kind of thing. Just a little.”

She flattens her body on their bed, the bed they share, in the house they share, in the life they share, giving him access to her tiny, reptilian scarlet letter. “I do. On occasion.”

“Did he know that?” 

“Mulder, stop.”

“Scully, I’m not mad about it. I promise. I just want to know.”

She sighs again. He’s never requested details about her encounter. “What is it you want to know?”

“You’ve told me why you did it,” he says. “But not how.” 

“Mulder.” She flips onto her back, the snake hidden now, burrowed away. She’s uncomfortable with this, he knows. He hovers over her, intent on making her understand that he is not angry, that this is not his ego talking. He doesn’t feel that anymore, not with her. But the tattoo and the sex with Jerse have always been rolled into one entity, one moment, inextricable in his mind. He wants to separate them, still. He wants to try.

“It’s going to be there forever, Scully. And I don’t want to wonder forever.”

She sighs, her eyelids look heavy. She’s tired. Their exertions have been exhausting tonight and she’s still sweaty. She’s quiet for a moment, then begins. 

“It was the first time I realized I liked the pain. It quieted my mind, made me focus on nothing but the feeling itself. I’d been so busy for so long keeping all my feelings inside. I appreciated that: the rawness of it. Just of being alive.” He drags a finger across her stomach. She shivers at his touch. “Just of the feeling.”

He pulls her hand to his lips, kisses her pulse point. “Then what?”

She takes a deep breath, exhales. “Then... we went back to his place. There was a storm and he suggested I stay over, for safety’s sake.”

He scoffs. _Oh, the irony._ “Fucking asshole.”

“Shh,” she laughs. Everything that followed wasn’t her fault. He’ll never know every detail but he knows this for certain. “His tattoo started bleeding, and I took off his shirt to check it. When I went to touch it he… he grabbed me.”

Mulder tilts his head, concerned. “What do you mean, grabbed you?”

“You know. Like this.” She repeats, presumably, the action that so aroused her all those years ago by grabbing his wrists, flipping him onto his back beside her. She straddles him, lifting an eyebrow. “Hot, right?”

She releases his hands and they go to her hips like magnets. It’s impossible to ascertain what exactly did it but he feels himself twitch, his desire awakening anew beneath her. “Er… yes. He did that?”

She shrugs. “I took a bit of creative license. For the story’s sake, you see.” She leans down, grinning, giving him a short kiss. If she didn’t before, she has his undivided attention now.

She rests her forehead against his, his breathing steady but gaining momentum. “Mulder, you know I didn’t go out with this guy intending to sleep with him, right?” she asks quietly.

“I do now.”

“Well, it wasn’t the plan. But in the moment, I guess… I got swept up. I’ll admit it.” She kisses him again. “It had been a long time for me, years actually, and I’m not going to lie, I wanted it. And he wanted me.”

His fear of hearing this story is rapidly dissipating. Now he’s just getting turned on. “Well, he might be an asshole but he had great taste.”

She begins rocking against him gently, slowly, and he knows she can feel him getting hard again. “When it started, it was just about the feeling, Mulder. About feeling something, anything. I needed that, badly.” He runs his hands along her thighs. “But when it really got going…” she looks into his eyes but stops, maybe unsure how to proceed.

“Just tell me.”

“I thought about you.”

She’s never told him this part before. Maybe she’s just making it up, trying to make him feel better. Maybe she’s never been comfortable revealing this much of herself to him.

Or maybe she’s been afraid to tell him.

“No, you didn’t,” he replies. The first scenario seems the most likely. 

“You don’t believe me?” she asks coyly. “Why would I make this up?”

“To protect my fragile masculinity?”

She smiles. “After all this time, I have no reason to think that part of you still exists, Mulder.”

It does, though. Just like it does with her. “Well, I had absolutely no reason to think you needed me to tell you about all that scoot you still have in your boot.”

“Mulder, no one needed you to tell me _that_.”

“Fair enough,” he laughs, and she smiles. “But we all have our insecurities.”

“I know,” she says, more seriously. “But I’m telling you the truth. Okay?”

He nods. He wants to believe.

“So anyway, suddenly all I can think about is what it would be like to be kissing you, touching you. What you would do, what you would say. How you would make me feel.” She leans down to whisper into his ear. “He kept saying ‘Dana…’”

“Okay, stop.” He pushes her back gently by her biceps. Perhaps that jealousy isn’t completely gone after all. “I think I’ve heard as much as I want to.”

“No, you want to hear this, I promise.”

He looks at her skeptically, something he isn’t used to doing. “I really don’t think I do.”

“Trust me,” she says, gently stroking his cheek with her fingers. He hates the part where he let some other guy have her, he hates that so much, but he loves her. 

He trusts her.

He nods his head almost imperceptibly and she smiles, that smile he’d fight off monsters like Ed Jerse until the end of time to see.

“I told him to call me Scully instead.”

He blinks. He can’t believe what he’s just heard. “And… he did?”

For the first time tonight she blushes, and he can see the pink hue appear on her cheeks, her ears, her neck. She looks down in embarrassment and shakes her head in the affirmative. “I really just told you that, didn’t I?”

His lips curve up into a smile in spite of himself. “You were right. I’m glad you told me that.”

“I couldn’t believe it even when I said it,” she admits. “I just… I wanted to it be you, Mulder.”

“Even though you were mad at me?”

“Especially because I was mad at you,” she grins. They look at each other for a moment, then she looks away, reflective.

She closes her eyes, still slowly moving against him. He can tell she’s there now, in Philadelphia, in some stranger’s apartment, coming to this huge, life altering revelation. How liberating that must have felt. How frightening.

How lonely.

It almost overwhelms him, the idea of Scully picturing him in this way, imagining him the same way he’d imagined her so often. So many years went by before they’d allowed themselves to experience what it really felt like.

“Hey, Scully.” He reaches up, touches the hollow at her throat softly. She stops rocking and opens her eyes.

“Could it… have been me? All those years ago? If things had been different?”

She smiles and reaches out to run her fingers through his hair. “Mulder, all you had to do was ask.”

He closes his eyes. “I’m sorry I was such an asshole.”

“It’s okay. I’ve forgiven you.”

“Come here,” he says. He pulls her down into his chest and holds her there, his heart beating next to hers. They’re together now. Everything he needs is in his arms.

“Tell me why you kept the tattoo then, Scully.” He sits up until he’s facing her, maneuvering her into his lap. She wraps her legs around him and his hands encircle her, touching the serpent once again. “I still want to know.”

“It reminds me of something,” she says carefully, draping her arms around his neck. “Not of him, but… of that feeling. A feeling I chased for a long time.” His fingers still circle the snake. 

“What feeling?”

“That feeling I got whenever you ran somewhere and I chased after you. And every single time we ended up right back at the beginning.” He lets this in. She’s not being vindictive, only contemplative. “I didn’t remove it because it isn’t just a piece of me; it’s a piece of you.”

He doesn’t say anything, trying to work this out.

“It is you, Mulder. Year after year, chasing monsters, chasing darkness. Never wanting to stop. You’re the snake eating his own tail. I basically got you tattooed on my ass,” she smiles, throwing his own words back in his face. He treated her poorly at the time. He’d been so young back then, so stupid. 

He shifts uncomfortably. “But… did you know that? At the time?” He wants to know the truth. 

“No,” she answers him. “It’s something I learned over time, as you and I grew.” She places both hands on his face, looks into his eyes, utterly sincere. “And we grew together. Whatever darkness we found, we always came around, out the other side. We always found each other.”

He smiles at this. This is her truth, the reason she’s kept the ouroboros all these years. It doesn’t make her think of a mistake, or a regret. It was a huge turning point in their relationship. A choice. Her road to Damascus.

If she can think of it this way, he will too.

“I did consider it, once,” she admits. “Removing it.” He doesn’t want to ask but he has a feeling he already knows. “...When we were apart.”

“But you didn’t,” he points out.

“No, I didn’t.”

“Because… it reminded you of what an asshole I was?”

She looks him in the eye as she scoots her body close, so close, until she’s pressed up against him, their naked bodies encircling each other completely. Just like the snake that still rests on the small of her back, circling around and around.

“No,” she says, very seriously. 

“Then why?”

She leans in and kisses him once more, a long, impassioned kiss that casts every single doubt from his addled mind.

“Because somehow I knew we would come around.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my #TeamBanging crew ;p


End file.
